


intermission

by Notfye



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Back to School, College, Driving, F/M, Feelings, Late Night Conversations, Past Relationship(s), Requited Unrequited Love, Summer, Teenagers, ya know the existentialism of going to college
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-17
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2021-01-26 01:27:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21365887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Notfye/pseuds/Notfye
Summary: It is a few nights before they’re both meant to go off to college when Marius texts Éponine and asks if she’d like to go for a drive.She types back a sure.(there's a drive and attempts to work out feelings without actually talking about them)
Relationships: (mentioned) - Relationship, Cosette Fauchelevent/Marius Pontmercy, Marius Pontmercy/Éponine Thénardier
Comments: 6
Kudos: 13





	intermission

**Author's Note:**

> In which I am Totally Not Projecting and nothing really ends with the fallout.
> 
> Also this is like, noticeably american, sorry 
> 
> Also also I know this is the second fic I have about people driving around aimlessly as a way to cope with growing up which I didn't realize until I had written most of it, so. Here it is anyway.

It is a few nights before they’re both meant to go off to college when Marius texts her and asks if she’d like to go for a drive. It’s a strange request from him, Éponine knows he hates driving, knows that they haven’t seen each other since the end of May. But this summer must have been awful for him. Maybe things have changed. 

She types back a  _ sure _ , and fifteen minutes later, his car is idling in the street below.

She slides into the passenger’s seat as Marius asks, “When do you have to be home?”

“Uh,” she says, because how could he have forgotten how careless her parents are. “I don’t - They don’t - Whenever.”

“Oh,” he says, flushing, “Right. Sorry. I forgot.” His hands are too tight around the steering wheel. 

It has been a long time since she’s been in this car, she realizes. The fabric of the seat below her still feels soft and worn and the dashboard is still permanently dusty. It feels a little like she’s dreaming, tripping back into a life that once was. 

Éponine doesn’t know how long their uncomfortable silence lasts, but when she can’t take it anymore she asks, “How has your summer been?”

“Quiet,” he says, and Éponine knows it is not the whole truth. She knows from Grantaire who knows from Jehan who knows from Courfeyrac that Marius’s grandfather died in June, and that nothing has been right for him since. If they were still close, she’d have gone to the funeral; she’d have tag-teamed distractions with Courfeyrac. But things change. 

“What about yours?” he asks. Éponine thinks about how she has spent the past few months day drinking with Montparnasse and lying by Grantaire’s unused pool. Sleeping till noon and seeing the sunrise before bed. 

“The same,” she says. After a moment she rolls down her window. A beat later, he does the same. It is a moment of silent camaraderie. 

Marius merges onto the highway and flexes his fingers around the wheel. They’re headed North. She remembers, once, last September, that they’d driven to a field together at dusk and walked to the treeline at the edge. There had been lightning bugs and the heavy, wet smell of the forest. They’d talked on the hour drive back into town, but not about anything important. It’s one of Éponine’s favorite memories. 

“Where are we going?” she asks. 

“I don’t know,” he says, a sigh. “I thought maybe to that ice cream place, out in the middle of nowhere?” Éponine remembers that, too, the endless buzz of hot July days shifting to the endless buzz of the shop’s neon lights. Her cherry vanilla had melted halfway down her arm, and she hadn’t cared one bit. 

“Sure,” she says. It’s too far for him to drive, she thinks, but she lets it go. The lights on the adjacent roads bleed into the night and Éponine painstakingly forces herself to relax. 

“How’s Cosette?” she asks, because she hates herself. 

Something in his arm stiffens. “Good,” he says, and there is a pause. “I haven’t seen her much this summer.”

Éponine doesn’t say anything. 

“She’s going so far for college,” he continues, “I think, I think we broke it off.”

Something like hope burns in her chest for half a second before the rest of that sentence catches up to her. “You  _ think _ you broke it off?”

“I—Yeah. I mean, we didn’t really talk it out, but. You know where things are going, sometimes.”

She certainly does. It occurs to her that he has had a rough summer, and she feels a pang of guilt. She knows that she has places to go on her worst nights; She wonders if Marius knows that he is allowed to ask that of people. 

They speed over the river and the trees get thicker, the highway darker. Some part of Éponine yearns desperately for the months that have passed, but the rest doesn’t know if she’d take it back if she could. 

“Are you sad?”

He glances at her, and it makes her nervous. “I guess,” he starts. “It’s more that everything’s changing all at once.”

That, Éponine can’t relate to. She’s been waiting for the harsh sweetness of college for as long as she knew it was coming. A clean break. She feels like she should say she’s sorry, but she’s not sure for what. 

“Yeah,” she says, in place of everything else. 

They lull into silence. They should be talking, Éponine thinks. They have so much to talk about. But instead the dark woods  _ whoosh  _ by and the only sound is the road and the wind. It’s too loud to talk, anyway, she reasons. 

“How’s Montparnasse?” Marius asks, stilted. Éponine doesn’t answer right away. 

“What do you mean?” she asks. 

“You know,” Marius spares her a glance, “how are you guys?” 

It clicks very suddenly and despite everything, Éponine can’t help but laugh. “We’re not dating. Or anything else.” 

She wonders if he is blushing at the implication. After a beat, he coughs. “Well, how is he anyway?”

“Good,” she says. It comes out a little strained, the way white lies do when there’s nothing better to say. 

More silence fills the car. That’s all this car ride has been, Éponine thinks. Just advancing awkward silences. 

Marius rushes to fill it. “How did the scholarship thing go?” 

“Alright,” she says. “I mean, I’ll still have debt, but it won’t be as bad as I thought it’d be.” She can’t tell whether the polite thing to do is to ask him the same question or move on from money altogether. It doesn’t really matter. All she really wants to ask is why he texted her. She wants to know if it means something, which it probably doesn’t, but she’ll trick herself into believing anything. Whatever this is only adds fuel to the fire. 

She’s saved from asking, though, because while she’s overthinking, Marius pulls the car into the exit lane. The ice cream stand is nearly highway-side, and so the silence in the car is just barely unbearable by the time the engine is turned off. 

Éponine practically flings herself out of the car in her haste to get out, and then tries to walk like a normal person to the window. When she realizes Marius isn’t right behind her, she pauses and waits for him to catch up. 

She orders cherry vanilla again, and its sort of like an inside joke with herself, except Marius says, “Again?” with a bit of humor. She’s too overcome with  _ he remembers _ to do anything but nod, even though she knows it’s stupid. He gets regular vanilla, and they go back to his car to eat because it’s too cold for ice cream after all. 

“I’m sorry,” Éponine says, despite herself, as soon as they’re settled. 

“For what?” Marius asks, genuinely perplexed, spoon halfway to his mouth. He’s looking right at her, and for some reason, he looks so young, too young, and Éponine cannot believe all that has happened. 

“You know,” she waves the hand that isn’t holding her ice cream. “The way things went. For not being around so much.”  _ It wasn’t fair of me _ , she wants to say.

He doesn’t answer right away, and he looks away from her. “I don’t think that was all your fault,” he says, and fails to elaborate. He looks at her again, and she turns in her seat to face him more fully. 

Éponine isn’t sure whether he’s right or not. She knows that she probably shouldn’t put all the blame on herself, but it’s hard not to. She’s the one who stopped hanging around him, she’s the one who hasn’t sent a text this whole summer, she’s the one who did this. He could have reached out, but she didn’t really expect him to, she made it pretty clear she wanted to be left alone. 

Maybe it isn’t all her fault. She doesn’t know.

Marius isn’t looking at her anymore. “It’s kind of funny that we’re back here.”

“It’s been a while,” she says. She looks out at the stand. The sky is sunset blue and the clouds are pink and purple and it sort of makes her want to keep driving until they reach the sea, or something. “At least this didn’t change,” she says, and knows it’s a lie but pretends that it isn’t.

“Are you excited for college?” he asks, and the reason she’s there is becoming all too apparent. 

“Yeah, aren’t you?” 

“Not really.”

“It’ll be fine,” she says, and resists the urge to roll her eyes. “You know it’ll be fine. You’re just—It’ll be different.”

“I know,” Marius says, and sounds terrified. 

“That’s not a bad thing. You know that.” She’d forgotten how easy it is to say the right thing to him. He looks down at his hands and the cup of ice cream in them. 

“I know,” he says, quieter. It’s too easy for her to love him. She puts down her half-finished ice cream in the cupholder. 

“I’m sorry, too,” he says after a beat, again neglecting to specify. She’s pretty sure she knows what he’s talking about, anyway. 

So long ago, they had kissed. And then that evening, he had texted her and said he was anxious about it all. And Éponine said they never had to do anything about it if he didn’t want to. 

And he didn’t want to. 

She must have thought, somewhere, that he would always be hers, in a sort of almost-but-not-quite way. That they may not date but were still thick as thieves, that one day he’d feel better about the whole thing, that one day he’d be willing to give it a try. 

She was so young, then. Instead, Cosette had appeared, and any chance Éponine had ever had was gone with her arrival. But Cosette isn’t here anymore. 

Marius is staring at her lips just enough to be noticeable. Éponine leans a little further over the center console, her ice cream abandoned in the cupholder. He leans to her too, unconsciously, until he notices; then, he leans back. He is still worried, after all this time. 

Now or never, Éponine thinks. 

She leans in further and he stills. Gently, she tilts her head and slots their lips together all on her own. She holds it for a moment, until she catches movement in the corner of her eye and pulls back, slowly. 

History never repeats, but it echoes. She looks at him, and he doesn’t look angry or offended or anything of the sort. Instead, his eyes almost,  _ almost  _ half-lidded; there’s blush up near his ears. She feels the center console digging into her chest. 

She takes one of her cherry-stained hands and gives his hand a squeeze, and sits back in her seat. 

A few moments pass. She says, “I think college will be good for you.”

“Yeah,” he says, dreamily, then comes back to himself. “Yeah. I think it’ll…” he trails off. 

“Be a good distraction?” Éponine finishes, smiling wryly. It feels ghostly familiar. 

“Exactly,” he says, settling. He runs his hands up and down the wheel. It’s as if nothing has happened. Éponine, without any prompting, takes both their cups out of the car and tosses them out. 

The drive back home is quiet, but not uncomfortable. Marius misses the turn for her street and she laughs as he turns around. 

He pulls over and parks in front of her building, but she doesn’t get out right away. He clenches and unclenches his hands. 

After a beat, he asks, “Can I call you in the morning?”

Éponine sputters a moment. “Sure,” she says, when she can form words again. 

She feels strange walking back into her family’s apartment. As though something has shifted so slightly, in a way that makes all the difference in the world. Two inches to the left: just enough to make her walk into everything without realizing it’s out of place.

In the dark, she stares up at her bedroom ceiling and wonders if it’s truly over, after all. 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm always desperate for people to say anything at all about my writing so! Comments and kudos? Loved and deeply appreciated, as always


End file.
